Angelina's secret sadness - by her brother

By SHARON FEINSTEIN

Last updated at 15:35 26 March 2007

Even by the standards of Hollywood it is an extraordinary project.

When three-year-old Pham Quang Sang explores his new home for the first time this week, he will become the latest addition to what must be one of the fastest-growing families on the planet, not to mention the most colourful.

Little Pham, from Vietnam, joins Maddox from Cambodia, Zahara from Ethiopia and Shiloh, born in Namibia last May. Equally remarkable are the parents, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, a superstar couple prepared to embrace domesticity on a heroic scale.

Ms Jolie has promised to adopt babies from every corner of the globe, without limit, and this is no empty threat. Already she has collected a family that resembles the United Nations.

She faces constant criticism, claims that she is a publicity-seeker, and demands that she take American babies instead of looking to the developing world for children.

But the 'Brangelina' circus rumbles on, unperturbed, which on past form is no surprise. Since she first hit stardom, she has been defiantly unconventional, whether it is boasting about unusual sex, showing off her collection of knives, or her large, and some will feel disfiguring, collection of tattoos.

Although recognised the world over, she is a woman truly known by very few, but her brother, 33-year-old actor and director James Haven Voight, can honestly claim to be one of them.

A reticent man who has spent much of his life in the shadow of his famous younger sister, he rarely seeks the limelight.

But with concern mounting about Angelina's behaviour, he has used his first-ever newspaper interview to defend her reputation and shed some light on the damaged and dysfunctional upbringing which has shaped them both.

In a fascinating insight into a very private world, he blames the bullying and manipulation of their handsome movie-hero father, Jon Voight, star of Midnight Cowboy, for blighting both their lives.

And he says it is the trauma of their childhood which has driven his sister to create a huge and independent family of her own.

Already emotionally vulnerable, the death of their mother in January of this year has left 31-year-old Angelina shattered. She is eating little and already seems to be losing her famous curves.

Now, more than ever, says her brother, she is determined to place her faith in the lives of the children - and who knows how many more there will be - she is gathering around her.

"I have no memory at all of my mother shouting at me or at my sister," James explains. "But I do have horrible memories of my father and the way he behaved. He was so tough on our mother.

"He lived in the same town. We saw him around Christmas time or at school recitals. He was always around but he never did his job as a father.

"I think one of the reasons Angelina and I care so much for other people is his treatment of our mother. Angelina and I were very protective of her for that reason."

It was their mother, Marcheline Bertrand, who provided the emotional underpinning to their lives, he says - the one point of stability amid the chaos. Her loss to cancer, aged just 56, has been devastating.

"Angie has become very thin because she's grieving," he admits. "It's even difficult for her to eat. I keep saying to her, 'Don't forget to eat'.

"But you know she doesn't pay much attention to food anyway and she's been going through a process of grief like me. She has not wanted to eat, nor has she been able to."

It ought to have been a privileged childhood for James and Angelina. Born in 1973 and 1975 respectively, they were members of Hollywood aristocracy. As teenagers they were educated at the Beverly Hills High School, alma mater to the stars - a school made more famous still by its central role in the long-running series Beverly Hills 90210.

Certainly, James remembers the domestic security of his mother's routine with affection.

"There was very much that home feeling when we came back from school," he recalls.

"Angie and I would walk in and comment on how we could smell things cooking and baking in the kitchen.

"My mum was methodical in making sure we did our homework perfectly. She would do outlines to help us. When we were younger, she used flash cards.

"Or she'd be in the middle of cooking and pick up a carrot and teach us about the vegetable or the fruit so that it was visual as well. Angie is now the same with her kids."

Marcheline, a beauty of mixed French-Canadian and Iroquois heritage, was an actress in her own right when she married Voight in 1971. But it was a brief partnership. They separated in 1976, shortly after Angelina's birth.

James and Angelina refuse to talk about the reasons for their parents' break-up - although there have been persistent rumours of womanising.

For all Marcheline's efforts to create a happy home, it was impossible to escape the destructive influence of Voight.

Money was one of many battlegrounds, although there should hardly have been a shortage of cash.

By 1975, he was a household name, handsome, blue-eyed and in demand.

Yet according to James, it was a constant battle - to the point that Angelina and her older brother were reduced to pleading with him to pay the child support he owed.

"I tried hard when I was alone with him," recalls James. "The alimony was always an issue. He would claim he was taking good care of her.

"But in reality Mum was stressing out and we had to tell him he was causing the problem. This would be when I was 13 and Angie was 11.

"We definitely had a taste of his manipulative behaviour. But it was when he dealt with my mother that we really saw him pulling the strings.

"And that made us very sad and angry. Angelina and I saw my mum oppressed. Now we're protective of women on their own and, of course, of children."

It was an experience which drove brother and sister closer and even today their relationship borders on intensity. H for 'Haven' is tattooed on Jolie's wrist.

Notoriously, she gave him a long and passionate kiss when celebrating her Oscar success for Girl, Interrupted in 2000.

James, who has the same striking looks as his sister, travels with Brad and Angelina on many of their foreign expeditions, and spends hours in the company of her growing brood.

Growing up, they never went hungry, but there were hardships. No one in Hollywood walks - Los Angeles is not built for the convenience of pedestrians - yet neither Angelina nor James could afford a car.

He explains: "One of the saddest things in my life happened when I was 16, which is when you can get your permit to drive in LA. I did not have a car in High School and neither did Angelina.

"Try to imagine. You go to Beverly Hills High, one of the wealthiest High Schools in the nation. Even the cheapest car that anyone has is brand new. All my friends are well off. I have a movie-star father and no car.

"It was debilitating. I did not to go to the prom [the social highlight of an American high school career] because I felt uncomfortable that Dad would have to drive me. It's an embarrassing thing.

"The significant years of dating and getting to know yourself, I didn't experience any of that. I didn't experience what I think is one of the most important times in a person's life, and neither did Angelina. It affected both of us.

"When I was in college and finally dating I went to my dad and told him what it was like for me in High School. He didn't try to understand at all. He said he didn't have money."

It was a lesson that neither of them forgot. James says: "Angie has been driven to be an independently wealthy woman now because we saw what it was like to be at the mercy of someone who controls the money and pulls the strings.

"There were times when our dad was awesomely good with us, but my biggest and most abiding memory is that he would look more to our faults than to our strengths."

It must, then, have been particularly hard to follow him in the movie industry. Certainly for all his sensitivity and good looks, James has scored only modest success with parts in the 2001 movies Original Sin - starring his sister - and Monster's Ball, which starred his sister's then husband, Billy Bob Thornton.

James says: "Look at what Angelina is doing - her work with the United Nations, raising awareness of refugees. It would just be great if Dad would commend her, or send her a message of encouragement. But she's never heard those words from him."

However, it did nothing to blunt her ambitions or her determination. In fact, the young Angelina was precocious in many ways.

This was a girl sufficiently confident to start a sexual relationship at the age of 14 and bring her lover back to live under the same roof with the tolerance, if not the approval, of her mother.

James denies that his sister is a domineering character, claiming that her famed decisiveness is, like her love of knives and her boasts about sadomasochistic sex, an attempt to be independent of other people's control.

But he is not ashamed to admit he is under her influence, in all sorts of ways.

"She's always been very protective of me with regards to my romantic life, which I love," he smiles. "She wants me to be with the right woman. When you come from a divorced home, divorce is what you desperately want to avoid.

"Maybe I haven't found the right woman because my sister is too picky for me. Any woman has to go through two filters, me and then my sister.

"I'm a perfectionist by nature. Then, because I'm so close to Angie it's like I've already got the perfect woman in my life and it's hard for anyone else to live up to that.

"I go to Angie for advice and won't do anything without her because we were so close as children."

Her influence on him is so profound, he claims he has even been persuaded to adopt a child himself - provided he can find a partner first. Angelina has even brought about a change of career, persuading him to spend large parts of his time campaigning for charity. He is currently preparing to take part in a major US campaign to fight the AIDS pandemic in Uganda.

James is outraged by the claim that their relationship might in any way be inappropriate - claims prompted by 'that' kiss after the 2000 Oscars.

"I did not give Angie a French kiss, it was something simple and lovely," he insists.

"She was about to go off to Mexico to finish filming Original Sin with Antonio Banderas. I congratulated her on the Oscar win and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. It was snapped and became a big thing round the world."

It seemed at one point the fractured relationship between Angelina and her father was on the mend. The pair took part in the 2001 movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, for example, with Voight playing her on-screen father.

But Voight spoiled it by going on Access Hollywood, a prime-time US talk show, and accusing his daughter of having 'serious mental problems'. Jolie responded by legally erasing her surname, Voight, and banning him from seeing her children. They have not spoken since.

Voight's relationship with his son, meanwhile, is a little better. But not much. Voight has yet to talk to James in person following the death of his mother, an omission the son finds barely able to believe.

"My dad left a voicemail message that was very kind, wishing condolences to me and my sister. That was what he did," says James, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

Now, with the death of their mother, the wound is red raw.

"He was very tough on my mum for years and then the person he was tough on has gone. He can't do anything now, he can't fix that and it's very painful," James says.

"At some point I've got to be able to let my bitterness and anger towards him go and I'm working on that now. I believe my mother's in a better place. What I have to deal with is that there's no such thing as him making amends now - he's lost his chance and that just makes me and Angelina even more upset.

"When I first lost my mother, I couldn't stop crying. Fortunately, I was with Angie when we heard. It was such a big moment.

"If Angelina understood something about missing parents before, she understands completely now. Angelina and I are orphans too, in a way. When you see those kids in orphanages, they cling to each other. And that's exactly what they have - they have each other."